cheapest non nasty acrylic yarn for granny squares?

Bearing in mind how expensive yarn is and how much would be needed to make a blanket for a single bed, what's the cheapest yarn I could get away with for the end result to look good and have longevity?

Thanks to Soupy's warning on another thread I'm going to make my niece a blanket for uni next year in black, white and jaffa - it will look like Nemo. My niece is driving my poor sister to despair with her wardrobe full of black and sludgy colours.

Not sure what you meant by a Nemo blanket, Soupdragon I searched it on Ravelry and the only thing it came up with was a Sea blanket, which, incidentally, was created by a girl who used to live round the corner from us before she emigrated to Canada.

Just a tip - if you're doing a blanket, just make one granny square and keep letting it get bigger and bigger, changing colour every row / every couple of rows. Loads of different squares to sew together at the end are a pain in the arse and a real slog.

Hobbycraft used to sell some wool called Bonus DK which was nice and soft and not too pricey. I think it was made by Sirdar. They had a good range of colours too. I knitted some into baby cardigans as I thought it was soft enough for that.

Peter I made a blanket by the continuous method you described - it was good in that there was no sewing up, but it seemed so so slow to do, as one round would take ages. I do a lot of knitting so have lots of oddments so these blankets are ideal for using them up.

Woolly sorry if it is a silly question but how do you join as you go? I always sew up using an oversewing stitch but it can show and look a bit untidy.

Monikar have a look at the Attic24 blog. She has a photo tutorial fir joining granny squares. It is the one I followed and I could kick myself for not doing it sooner as it is so easy. I do end up doing a (uk) double crochet in the chain space to join - I think Attic24 uses a slip stitch - but I am happier with my method.

Now if I could only get my head around crocheting over the loose ends after joining in a new colour...

I am also learning how to crochet at the moment and I'm planning on doing the Atic24 granny stripe. Thank you for the yarn recommendation. If I was to attempt a single bed size blanket, how many balls of yarn will I need to buy?

My crochet blankets are for babies and I tend to do about a yard square - this uses about 400-500g. I would think a single bed size would be at least double this size so if I were you then I would buy 1000g so that would be 10 balls of 100g.

My not-quite-single-bed sized rainbow ripple took about 1.5 100g balls each of 7 colours. So, between 10 and 14 would probably be about right for single bed. I would estimate more than 10 though - I can't remember whether the Stripe uses more or less yarn than a Ripple.